2014: The Year According to Alejandro Cesarco

To commemorate the year that was, we invited an array of artists, writers, designers, and curators—from curator Devrim Bayar and artist Kalup Linzy to designer David Reinfurt and artist Shahryar Nashat—to share a list of the most noteworthy ideas, events, and objects they encountered in 2014.

Alejandro Cesarco was born in 1975 in Montevideo, Uruguay. He has exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. His most recent solo exhibitions include: Secondary Revision, Frac Île-de-France/Le Plateau, Paris (2013); A Portrait, A Story, And An Ending, Kunsthalle Zürich (2013); Alejandro Cesarco, MuMOK, Vienna (2012); Words Applied to Wounds, Murray Guy, New York (2012); The Early Years, Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2012); A Common Ground, Uruguayan Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennial (2011); One Without The Other, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico (2011); and Present Memory, Tate Modern, London (2010). Group exhibitions include: Under The Same Sun, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2014); Plaisance, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2013); The Imminence of Poetics, 30th Bienal de São Paulo (2012); formes brèves, autres, FRAC Lorraine, Metz, and MARCO, Vigo (2012); Short Stories, Sculpture Center, Long Island City (2011); and Nine Screens, MoMA, New York (2010). He was the 2011 winner of the Baloize Art Prize, with his installation The Street Were Dark With Something More Than Night Or The Closer I Get To The End The More I Rewrite The Beginning at Art 42 Basel. These exhibitions addressed, through different formats and strategies, his recurrent interests in repetition, narrative, and the practices of reading and translating. He has also curated exhibitions in the U.S., Uruguay, Argentina, and a project for the 6th Mercosur Biennial (2007), Porto Alegre, Brazil. He is director of the nonprofit arts organization, Art Resources Transfer. Forthcoming solo exhibitions in 2015 include: Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; Murray Guy, New York; Parra-Romero, Madrid; and Kiria Koula, San Francisco. He lives and works in New York.

(1)

Pierre Huyghe, Centre Pompidou (Paris)

Installed within the structure left vacant after Mike Kelley’s retrospective in the same space, Huyghe’s continuous attempts at reinventing the exhibition model as a site of playful experimentation came together movingly. Works bled and echoed into one another, for an experience that felt partly choreographed and partly left to chance—the presence of animals in Huyghe’s work played a key role in this. (For more art and animals see Godard’s latest marvel, mentioned below.)

(2)

Mike Kelley, MoMA/PS1 (New York)

Curated by Ann Goldstein, organized by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. What better place to house Kelley’s posthumous retrospective than in a defunct cavernous-like school building? Birdhouses, Educational Complex, felt-banners, Extracurricular Activities, and all their trippy post-punk consequences.

(4)

Haim Steinbach, once again the world is flat, Kunsthalle Zürich

I actually did not make it to Zürich to see this show—which was curated by Beatrix Ruf, Tom Eccles, and Johanna Burton—but its CCS Bard iteration (June 22–December 20, 2013) was, to my mind, one of the most memorable exhibitions of 2013.

(5)

Louise Lawler, No Drones, Metro Pictures

A follow-up to Lawler’s adjusted to fit series, the tracings presented in this show pushed forward a self-reflective analysis of the reception of the artist’s own work as analogy to the state of the art world and its larger contexts. Sharp and humorous, as always. An exemplary practice where every move counts.

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(7)

Private tour of Christopher Williams, The Production Line of Happiness, Museum of Modern Art

Led by the artist and organized by Artists Space. A master class on exhibition design, institutional critique, and ways of looking. The show is also accompanied by one of the year’s most stunning catalogues.

(8)

Amy Sillman, One Lump or Two, Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard

Curated by Helen Molesworth. Brilliant and sensuous. Figuration, abstraction, animation all with Sillman’s trademark wry wit. An artist to look up to.

(9)

Martin Beck, Last Night, full listening session

Organized by White Columns, PS1, and the New York Art Book Fair, Last Night, Beck’s latest publication, documents the 118 songs played by David Mancuso on June 2, 1984 at the last party of the 99 Prince Street location of the Loft. On Sept. 13, Beck (with the help of Matthew Higgs) played the 13-hour-long playlist.

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(11)

Jean-Luc Godard, Good Bye To Language

At 83, the masterful auteur can’t stop himself from continuing to explore the possibilities of cinema and has produced possibly the most radical 3D film ever made. At certain moments Godard moves the dual camera lenses out of sync, emphasizing the artificiality of the 3D effect. These sequences seem to require viewers to close one eye or the other, and to in turn devise individual montages with their own senses. The director’s beloved dog Roxy is the other star of the film.

(12)

DUC

The Distribution to Underserved Communities Library Program of Art Resources Transfer celebrated another year of creating access to the arts and education by distributing free contemporary art books among a growing public of library patrons, students, artists, and readers across the country. In the last year alone, the DUC distributed more than $690,000 worth of new art books to 517 public schools and libraries nationwide.